Can't sleep after interrupted hypnosis

I'm talking about literally being hypnotized by a hypnotist who was carrying out some kind of experiment on TV.

They were putting people under hypnosis and making them act weird(like animals etc.), then they asked watchers who want to try it on themselves. They said to fold your hands together in front of you and look at a pointer finger, no matter which.., then I started to knock out at this exact moment and it scared me so I woke myself up becoming back conscious.

This happened 6 months ago. 

Later that day I just couldn't fall asleep, because every time when I relax and start to fall asleep my heart starts to beat faster, it accelerates as I become more relaxed and closer to the sleeping state. These symptoms used to slowly wipe out over time, but it changed like 2 months ago when I accidentally got scared by a friend while I was trying to meditate and calm myself down and "fix my heart rate", that unlucky coincidence made it worse and my heart was beating even faster during my sleep time after this happened.

I know that my heart beats faster because sometimes during the night it hurts and wakes me wake up so I can't sleep anymore and I need to stay awake and not sleepy for some time so it will allow my heart to relax. Also, I use android app to monitor heart rate. The rate is slower before I try to sleep, then in a few minutes later it's is faster. 

For me now it is a usual situation when at the end of the day I'm very tired and feel like I'm about to knock out, but all tiredness and drowsiness go away after 5 minutes later as I started to fall asleep and my heart started to beat faster. So I'm stuck in this state when my heart calms down when I'm awake and not trying to sleep and 20 minutes after, when I make the next try it starts to beat fast again. I usually need to use sleep medicine to fall asleep. Now, I feel completely depleted and exhausted by this "way of sleeping" under medicine and waking up in the mornings from the heart pain (as it suffers from beating fast all the night and finally needs to rest during the day); it affects my studying because it's hard to remember things and concentrate on doing tasks.

I don't control it consciously coz I may be completely relaxed and not anxious about anything but my heart seems to have some subconscious reason to accelerate its beating, I suppose that my brain is scared of coming back to that state of deep relaxation and nearly sleeping that it experienced during that show, so it does the same that it did the first time to "save me" from being hypnotized - it wakes me up, increasing the heart rate.

I may be suffering from severe anxiety (and it may be one of the reasons why hypnosis influenced me so bad) but this is not the main problem in this case, because I don't care about my heart and what so ever, when I go to sleep, after 6 months of such poor sleeping, some days I don't even remember then I suffer from this problem, but it happens anyways no matter what I feel or think, when I relax, try to meditate, or sleep - my heart responds to it by beating faster, not slower as it is naturally supposed to.

What are the possible ways to fix it? Whom should I consult or what to do to ease it?

Hi André,

I'm wondering what advice your doctor gave you.

You do know, don't you, that the heart will accelerate under the effects of underlying anxiety even when you're not conscious of being anxious about anything at the time?

Try googling "fixed in hypnosis" too, though I suspect it won't reassure you in your current state of anxiety.

The doctors prescribed me 4 medicines (antipsychotics, an antidepressant, etc). These seem to not work during 2 months. I'm trying to explain that I need something different but the doctor doesn't seem to believe me. I think he thinks this is some kind of depression induced psychosomatic disorder, which it obviously isn't.

So still no progress on it. I just don't know what to do.

Now I know about subconscious anxiety.

I googled 'fixed in hypnosis', but it gave me nothing

I just sent you a private message, as links to non-Patient sites aren't permitted.

It's quite safe to open the message, which will come into your inbox in the normal way (unless posts from this site normally go into your junk mail). PMs via this site don't expose the email address of either party or carry viruses.

It's clear you developed anxiety about being hypnotized.

Every time you fall asleep you relive that experiment and anxiety kicks in.

Instead of focusing on regulating your heartbeat, you should tackle the anxiety disrupting it.

I'd suggest looking for a therapist assisting in trusting challenges and loss of control